Billy Pierce (14 June 1890 – 11 April 1933) was an African American choreographer, dancer and dance studio owner who has been credited with the invention of the
Black Bottom dance that became a
national craze in the mid-1920s.
Biography
The son of
two freedmen, Dennis and Nellie (née Shorter) Pierce, William Joseph Pierce was born in
Purcellville, Virginia
Purcellville is a town in Loudoun County, Virginia. The population was 8,929 according to the 2020 Census. Purcellville is the major population center for Western Loudoun and the Loudoun Valley. Many of the older structures remaining in Purcellvil ...
. His parents were
truck farmer
A market garden is the relatively small-scale production of fruits, vegetables and flowers as cash crops, frequently sold directly to consumers and restaurants. The diversity of crops grown on a small area of land, typically from under to som ...
s, but Billy, an only child, went to college, matriculating first at
Storer College
Storer College was a historically black college in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, that operated from 1867 to 1955. A national icon for Black Americans, in the town where the 'end of American slavery began', as Frederick Douglass famously put i ...
and then attending
Howard University
Howard University (Howard) is a Private university, private, University charter#Federal, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C. It is Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, classifie ...
.
Pierce started out as a journalist, eventually moving to Chicago to write for the ''
Chicago Defender
''The Chicago Defender'' is a Chicago-based online African-American newspaper. It was founded in 1905 by Robert S. Abbott and was once considered the "most important" newspaper of its kind. Abbott's newspaper reported and campaigned against Jim ...
'', the premier African American newspaper of its time. He also worked for two Washington, D.C.-based newspapers, the ''Dispatcher'' and the ''Washington Eagle''. During
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, he served with the
8th Infantry Regiment of the Illinois National Guard, an all-black unit commanded by Lieutenant Colonel
Otis B. Duncan, the highest ranking black officer in the United States Army during the War to End All Wars.
As a journalist, Pierce wrote about the arts, but eventually left his typewriter for a life in the theater. Starting in Chicago, he made his bones as a dancer and trombonist in
vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...
and performed as a banjoist in Dr. Diamond Dick's Kickapoo Medicine Show on the
Theater Owners Booking Association Theatre Owners Booking Association, or T.O.B.A., was the vaudeville circuit for African American performers in the 1920s. The theaters mostly had white owners, though there were exceptions, including the recently restored Morton Theater in Athens, ...
circuit of black vaudeville theaters, which took him to New York City. In Gotham, he re-entered the newspaper business. It was while soliciting advertising on Broadway, he decided to become a choreographer.
He conceived the idea of a dance studio along with Leonard Harper, who soon lost heart. Pierce brought their idea to fruition when he opened a dance studio in one room on the top floor of the Navex building on 46th Street west of Broadway where he doubled as an elevator operator.
The Billy Pierce Dance Studio at 223 West 46th Street in New York flourished and became one of the incubators for the cultural flowering known to posterity as the
Harlem Renaissance.
By 1929, Pierce's studio—the "largest of its kind" according to the ''
Afro American'' newspaper—occupied five rooms in the bottom two floors of the building, for which Pierce paid annually $6,000 in rent (equivalent to approximately $ in dollars).
Pierce ran the studio and coached Broadway stars, but did not serve as an instructor for the 27 classes that were given to students in 1929.
The Pierce Dance Studio was the professional home of his fellow African American choreographer
Buddy Bradley
Harold "Buddy" William Bradley Jr.,Peter Bagge ''Hate'' #6, 1991 Fantagraphics; page 6, panel 3. generally referred to as Buddy Bradley, is a comic book character created by Peter Bagge and the main protagonist in several of his comic books, mos ...
, who devised dance routines for the eccentric dancer
Tom Patricola
Tom Patricola (January 22, 1891 – January 1, 1950) was an American actor, comic and dancer who starred in vaudeville and motion pictures. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, New Orleans, Patricola established his fame as a hoofer, becoming a leading ...
, a white man. Patricola performed the Black Bottom with the
Ann Pennington in the musical-comedy revue ''
George White's Scandals of 1926'' on Broadway, whereupon it became popular eventually supplanting
Charleston on dance floors across America.
Along with the Black Bottom and the Charleston, among the specialities of the Billy Pierce Dance Studio were the Black Bottom with Taps, the Eccentric Buck and the Syncopated Buck, the Devil Dance, the Dirty Dig, the Flapper Stomp, the Harlem Hips, the Jungle Stomp, the Stair Dance, and the Zulu Stomp.
In the United States, African American choreographers like Pierce and Bradley generally worked uncredited. They also coached and developed routines for white performers, such as Bradley had coached Pericola. Before he became an Oscar-winning character actor,
Clifton Webb
Webb Parmelee Hollenbeck (November 19, 1889 – October 13, 1966), known professionally as Clifton Webb, was an American actor, singer, and dancer. He worked extensively and was known for his stage appearances in the plays of Noël Coward, i ...
was a
song and dance man on Broadway, appearing in many musicals. He honed his dancing skills at Pierce's studio. Pierce developed the "Moaning Low" dance routine for "Cliff" Webb, as he was then known, and
Libby Holman
Elizabeth Lloyd Holman (née Holzman; May 23, 1904 – June 18, 1971) was an American socialite, actress, singer, and activist.
Early life
Elizabeth Lloyd Holzman was born May 23, 1904, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the daughter of a lawyer and stockbrok ...
for ''The Little Show'' in 1931.
Along with Benny Rubin, Pierce did the choreography for the 1927 musical ''Half a Widow'', one of the few Broadway shows for which he received credit. He also created "The Sugar Foot Strut" dance for the smash hit musical ''Rio Rita'' (1927) and developed a show-stopping routine for Norma Terris, who played Magnolia in the original 1927 production of ''
Show Boat
''Show Boat'' is a musical with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It is based on Edna Ferber's best-selling 1926 novel of the same name. The musical follows the lives of the performers, stagehands and dock worke ...
'' and its 1932 revival. He also got credit for choreographing the dances in the 1932 musical revue ''Walk a Little Faster''.
In 1930, he spent eleven months in Europe, working with directors such as
Max Rheinhardt.
Personal life
Pierce married Nona Stovall in 1927, and they had two children, Billy Jr. (1928) and Denise (1930). His career was cut short when he died from
mastoiditis
Mastoiditis is the result of an infection that extends to the air cells of the skull behind the ear. Specifically, it is an inflammation of the mucosal lining of the mastoid antrum and mastoid air cell system inside the mastoid process. The ma ...
in 1933 at the age of 42.
References
External links
Walter Nelson on "The Black Bottom" (featuring clips of the dance)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pierce, Billy
1890 births
1933 deaths
African-American male dancers
African-American choreographers
American male dancers
American choreographers
American swing dancers
20th-century American dancers
20th-century African-American people
People from Purcellville, Virginia
Dancers from Virginia